Forum:BFF Rules Revision
Let's get started on revising the current rules. From the Bleach Fan Fiction Wikia Rules and Regulations - Seireitou Administration, I strongly disagree on the use of actual characters to determine levels of strength. Just comparing characters without having to set up a whole list pointing out each thing and discussing it is enough. Characters can jump around power levels, so this is not a good system to be using. Also, blocking, deletion, etc. based on the power level of a character is entirely unnecessary: not every character made is for role-playing purposes and I personally find that the Kawahirus and Getsueikirites are quite OP'd in relativity to Bleach standards. Discriminating against newbies' OP'd material not only gives the wiki a bad name but it prevents the community from growing. We should always strive to attract newcomers, since that would guarantee the wiki's longevity. Instead of what we do now, we should be more proactive in fixing the bad articles ourselves without changing the content of the article. That means we would be allowed to edit the article that belonged to someone else if it was for spelling and grammar, formatting correction, etc. This is a wiki that anyone can edit. If you don't want your content edited by others, feel free to post them on a third-party blog, but being an ass about others editing your article is unacceptable when Wikias are supposed to follow the policy of assuming good faith. Most people come with the intention of positively contributing to the wiki; being a hardass when the intention is good is just terrible member relations. Of course, some come just to troll or make life difficult, but that should not be the first assumption made. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 14:53, October 21, 2010 (UTC) : Here's the thing. I agree with you fully Lavi. Personally, I don't like godmodding rules in general. Obviously we don't want characters that are so powerful that they can destroy the earth with a sneeze, but when I think about it, nobody wants to RP with powerful characters like that anyways, so why restrict people from creating them? I don't mind people editing other people's articles to fix grammar, reword a sentence better, and things like that. What I do have a problem with, is random users coming on saying "Ooo I like that character." and then start adding thier crap to someone else's character (and yes I've seen that happen). I do believe we should assume good faith in others and only take action in cases of vandalism or blatant disregard of a user's property. Now, back on subject. I think as far as godmodding rules go; we should drop them. We have people like Arch and Aha or me and Sei that RP a lot of stuff together and rarely with others that have their own fanfiction universe so they should be able to determine the power limits for their universe. Put simply, if someone is too OP'ed for you, then don't roleplay with them. No one says you have to RP with an overpowered character. Some people, as Lavi said, come to make their own characters and have no intention of RPing, so they shouldn't be held to a godmodding standard either. As long as they follow our Manual of Style and other policies (which will be revised and decided upon here) then I could care less if their character could kill Aizen with a twitch of his eye. ---'Ten Tailed Fox' talk page 15:34, October 21, 2010 (UTC) :: Of course, adding onto an existing characters would be rolled back if no permission was obtained, since that would be vandalism of a page. It's not too difficult to look at the history page to see what edits have been made (it's on the drop-down menu where the name of the lastest editor is located). To add onto what Ten is saying with fan fic universes, it should be established what articles are within that one fan fiction universe and permission must be obtained in order to jump into that fan fic universe with personally created articles. On SWF, not doing so is fanon stealing (SWF editing policy can be found there too), which is a serious offense (though not a blockable one). --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 16:10, October 21, 2010 (UTC) ::: I agree to this. ---'Ten Tailed Fox' talk page 18:09, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Well, I agree with both points by both of you. However, I feel as if I need to put my two cents into this, but for originality's sake, let's call it my three cents :3 Anyways, Lavi, while I agree in your declaration of the Kawahirus (especially Seireitou and Kamui) being OP'd in terms of general Bleach, they weren't written that strong once being here. In fact, because me and Ten have made so many stories here, I could state several justifications to their current power levels, but I doubt any of us wanna contest that right now when we have more pressing matters. Also, while I also agree with Ten's Anti-Godmodding Rules, I also want to mention that I see Godmodding in two different categories: One, being characters that may be very strong, but have some sort of equal standing (no, Seireitou cannot defeat Aizen with a sneeze, lol) with other characters. As Ten said, because we have different fanfictions, hence different universes of our fan work, the power levels differ pending the ideas of the authors; similar in regards to the Goku vs Superman debate. But, also, the second category would be the kind of characters that literally have powers all over the place (like if someone has a fire-type Zanpakutō, all of a sudden, they gained Getsuga Tenshō. WTF is the reasoning in that?) Also, characters that have levels that are clearly beyond Bankai (like my failed Shūkai idea), or beyond the Segunda Etapa (like, a Tercera Etapa), also fit into my second category. No matter what fan fiction anybody has, when something fits into this second category, it shouldn't be treated as an acceptable article. While Ten has a point, and I quote him, "Put simply, if someone is too OP'ed for you, then don't roleplay with them.", I also have to note that we don't want our wikia to look like a mess of OP characters that have no justification to their abilities. Simply meaning, if we should have any sort of Godmodding rules, it should be that the means must justify the ends; they need to have clear reasons (and I use this phrase strongly) to the OP, but in the case of the fire-type having Getsuga Tenshō, there is no clear reason, and should be treated as unacceptable. In the case of Seireitou, he was no stronger than an average Captain when he was first introduced onto this wikia, probably even weaker seeing as he couldn't use Bankai on a master-level. After several million arcs of my own, and most with Tenny, he grew in power through character development. This would be a fair case. In Raian's case, same thing. He's been part of many arcs, and not just with my Seireitou character, but for example, now he's involved with Sadow's Beliar and stuff. Also, as per to Lavi's assuming good faith mention, some people are clearly trolls when they come here. While I do agree that somestimes we go overboard (and by we, I mean me... and Panth >_> and maybe Ten <_<), some users come on here with very obnoxious behavior, and make characters that are just clear trolling. Does anybody remember the IchiOrihime KuroHime character, or something like that? You can't honestly tell me that was an actual attempt at character creation. --Seireitou-shishō (My True Identity | Talk to Me :3) 18:50, October 21, 2010 (UTC) :Even if your characters have been through a bajillion stories, the progress at which they gain power does supercede that of even Ichigo, in my honest opinion. Also, I don't recall Sei-Kawa being weaker than a captain: he has always been equivalent or obviously stronger than the "average" one. But I did not mean to bring up the Kawahirus and Getsueikirites in order to force the two of you to revise them: I was only giving examples that are relevant to this discussion. Also, we should not discriminate against troll articles either. This might seem strange, but if we focused on improving it in terms of aesthetics and ignore the strong possibility that it's a troll, then the troll member would eventually get bored and leave. This is the best way to get rid of trolls, but it would only work if the member base also goes along with this "policy." But if the article is constantly being updated, we can only assume that the member is acting in good faith. Unfortunately, the way Bleach is structured makes it realistically impossible to say "content should not surpass level or it will be deleted." The featured article section can easily encourage quality articles through a focus on quality writing rather than quality I-can-kill-you. Many users focus too much on giving their characters a broad range of powers and place too little emphasis on personalities and backgrounds, making a large population of BFF characters cookie-cutter people. In my opinion, readers are more interested in the background of a character than how easily they can squash a lieutenant-level character: I find the descriptions of powers very similar across many characters, making them boring to read. If a member is acting in good faith, the featured articles section can serve as a list of example articles as well as a standard for the member to aspire to. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 21:22, October 21, 2010 (UTC) ::I'm setting up sections to break up this discussion into smaller pieces in alpha order. To discuss a topic, post in its respective section. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 21:29, October 21, 2010 (UTC) I'm posting this here because it doesn't really fall into any of the below sections. Like Sei, I openly admit that I can go overboard, but also agree that sometimes we have people who are trolls, or the people who are so obnoxious that they can't be dealt with (Creator5000, if anyone remembers). Lavi, I must respectfully disagree with you about not discriminating against trolls. Yes, if something is possibly a troll, we should give it the benefit of the doubt, and try to help them improve the article, but if it's obviously a troll, then in my opinion we should just deal with it. Also, if we are going to try to improve poorly written and/or godmod articles through examples/guidance instead of forcing users to change material, then i suggest that we somehow communicate that while admins can't force you to change something that's within the rules, their advice is likely solid and should be given consideration, at the least. Otherwise, we will end up with some people who say "It's within the rules, so you're not allowed to tell me to change it," when we try to give advice/suggestions. Just my perspective. --The Raven Master 23:43, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Editing policy * Should all articles be edit-able by others, as long as content remains unchanged? To answer the above statement, yes. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 21:37, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Yes. I always found it somewhat stupid that we could not, and even more so when some people yell at others for editing to change grammar (I forget who it was, but I've seen this happen once or twice). --The Raven Master 23:34, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Yes. ---'Ten Tailed Fox' talk page 00:43, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Featured articles * Should featured articles be used to encourage new members to write quality articles? My suggestion. Discuss. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 21:39, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Yes, but we would need a system that does not fall apart, and is not biased in favor of certain members, but still chooses exemplary characters. --The Raven Master 23:35, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Godmodding policy * Should the policy be continued? This got a little off-track in the above discussion, so let's focus on it in this section. --[[User:LaviBookman|'れび']] (talk to Lavi!) 21:39, October 21, 2010 (UTC)